The Way of All Flesh eBook

He struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding
this out, but facts were too strong for him.
Again he called on me and told me what had happened.
I was glad the crisis had come; I was sorry for Ellen,
but a complete separation from her was the only chance
for her husband. Even after this last outbreak
he was unwilling to consent to this, and talked nonsense
about dying at his post, till I got tired of him.
Each time I saw him the old gloom had settled more
and more deeply upon his face, and I had about made
up my mind to put an end to the situation by a coup
de main, such as bribing Ellen to run away with
somebody else, or something of that kind, when matters
settled themselves as usual in a way which I had not
anticipated.

CHAPTER LXXVI

The winter had been a trying one. Ernest had
only paid his way by selling his piano. With
this he seemed to cut away the last link that connected
him with his earlier life, and to sink once for all
into the small shop-keeper. It seemed to him
that however low he might sink his pain could not
last much longer, for he should simply die if it did.

He hated Ellen now, and the pair lived in open want
of harmony with each other. If it had not been
for his children, he would have left her and gone
to America, but he could not leave the children with
Ellen, and as for taking them with him he did not
know how to do it, nor what to do with them when he
had got them to America. If he had not lost energy
he would probably in the end have taken the children
and gone off, but his nerve was shaken, so day after
day went by and nothing was done.

He had only got a few shillings in the world now,
except the value of his stock, which was very little;
he could get perhaps 3 or 4 pounds by selling his
music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture
still belonged to him. He thought of trying
to live by his pen, but his writing had dropped off
long ago; he no longer had an idea in his head.
Look which way he would he saw no hope; the end, if
it had not actually come, was within easy distance
and he was almost face to face with actual want.
When he saw people going about poorly clad, or even
without shoes and stockings, he wondered whether within
a few months’ time he too should not have to
go about in this way. The remorseless, resistless
hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging
him down, down, down. Still he staggered on,
going his daily rounds, buying second-hand clothes,
and spending his evenings in cleaning and mending them.

One morning, as he was returning from a house at the
West End where he had bought some clothes from one
of the servants, he was struck by a small crowd which
had gathered round a space that had been railed off
on the grass near one of the paths in the Green Park.

It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of
March, and unusually balmy for the time of year; even
Ernest’s melancholy was relieved for a while
by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky;
but it soon returned, and smiling sadly he said to
himself: “It may bring hope to others,
but for me there can be no hope henceforth.”